Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Them!

I thought it was time to have a look around and see what kind of bugs seem to be frequenting my hops. Previous experience in Houston suggests I can expect at least something. It is certainly getting warm enough here. We have also had a lot of rain in the last week, so there's also very high humidity just like in Houston. The first thing I found was this:

This looks at lot like a simple house fly, on the tip of the Willamette. Several of the tips have been looking a little sad, much like this one. I just hope that these flies, or something similar, aren't laying their eggs in them. Doesn't seem to affect overall growth though so I won't be worrying anytime soon.

Also found this guy on the cage around the Willamette:

I'm reasonably sure (now) that this is a fire fly. From this angle you can see the lower part of the abdomen that produces the light:

From what I can tell fireflies primarily eat other bugs, particularly as larvae. Seems most firefly adults don't eat at all, their only purpose being to find another and mate. Again, I'm really not worrying about these guys. Seems they may even be beneficial in terms of getting rid of some of the bugs that might cause trouble. Incidentally, it's pretty cool having fire flies in your back garden at dusk.

Probably not much of a threat to the hops, but we certainly have ants in the garden. Here's a soldier on our hummingbird feeder:

I have seen lots of much smaller ants scurrying around it, which is why I'm thinking it's a soldier.

So far so good in terms of visible bugs. There is however some evidence of damage to leaves. Here's one from the Columbus:

The Cascade:

And the Willamette:

None of the damage on these leaves appears to be sufficient to hinder them much. There's still plenty of upward growth. The recent rain is most certainly helping. It also seems to have been helping the local fungal population too:

All told everything is looking like it's on course for a decent amount of growth this year. Still no sign of the Galena reappearing though.